President of PGA

Hon. Syed Naveed Qamar

MP (Pakistan)

Hon. Qamar serves as Federal Minister for Commerce and Investment, member of the Pakistan People’s Party and former Defense Minister. He is a champion for the protection of the oceans, addressing the illicit trade of small arms and light weapons and the rights of transgender persons in his country.

Chair of the International Council

Mr. Ali Ehsassi

MP (Canada)

Mr. Ehsassi is a liberal politician who represents the riding of Willowdale, Ontario in Canada's House of Commons. He is Chair of the House Foreign Affairs and International Development Committee.

Treasurer

Ms. Petra Bayr

MP (Austria)

Ms. Bayr is a Member of the Austrian National Council and Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) spokesperson for global development. She serves as General Rapporteur on Combating Racism and Intolerance at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe..

Dip. Margarita Stolbizer

(Argentina)

Dip. Stolbizer is a member of the Chamber of Deputies of Argentina. Originally a member of the Radical Civic Union (UCR), she founded her own party, Generation for a National Encounter (GEN) in 2007. She is a past President of PGA.

Hon. Valerie Woods

Speaker of the House of Representatives (Belize)

Hon. Woods has served as Speaker of Belize's House of Representatives since December 2020. Previously, she was a Senator for the People’s United Party.

Hon. Agho Oliver Bamenju

MP (Cameroon)

Hon. Agho Oliver Bamenju is a Member of Parliament in the Cameroon National Assembly. He is currently one of the youngest Members of Parliament. He is a human rights advocate on issues of child labor and child trafficking.

Hon. Sahar Albazar

MP (Egypt)

Hon. Sahar Albazar is an Egyptian MP and the Deputy Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee at the Egyptian House of Representatives. She is the Head of Harvard Women in Diplomacy, Defense and Development covering Sub- Saharan Africa.

Hon. Amanza Walton-Desir

MP (Guyana)

Hon. Amanza Walton Desir is a Guyanese politician and attorney serving as Shadow Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Guyana since 2020.

Hon. Dr. Angela Brown Burke

MP (Jamaica)

Dr. Brown Burke has served as Mayor of Kingston and St Andrew before becoming involved in National politics. She was elected the first woman chairperson of the 83-year-old People's National Party (PNP).

Hon. Antonio Niquice

MP (Mozambique)

Hon. Niquice serves as Chairperson of the Planning and Budget Commission (CPO) of the Mozambican Parliament.

Sen. Boris Dittrich

(The Netherlands)

Sen. Dittrich is a member and former leader of the Democrats 66 Party, jurist, author and human rights activist. He is the first member of the Dutch Parliament to have drafted four different Private Bills that have successfully become law and is a leading advocate on the issues of same-sex marriage, euthanasia, legalization of specific forms of sex work and decriminalizing the use of soft drugs. From 2007-2018, He has served as Advocacy Director of the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch.

Hon. Mirza Ikhtiar Baig

(Pakistan)

Hon. Mirza Ikhtiar Baig is a Member of the National Assembly and former Senior Vice President of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

Hon. Bernard Georges

MP (Seychelles)

Hon. Bernard Georges is a member of the National Assembly of Seychelles. A lawyer by profession, he is a member of the Seychelles National Party, and was first elected to the Assembly in 2002. In 2015, he was appointed to Judge of the Court of Justice for the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa.

Hon. Fox Odoi-Oywelowo

MP (Uganda)

Fox Odoi-Oywelowo is a Ugandan advocate and legislator. An avid human rights advocate and defender, he vows to hold every institution accountable for human rights violations,

Hon. Dr. Galyna Mykhailiuk

MP (Ukraine)

Dr. Galyna Mykhailiuk is a Member of Parliament of Ukraine and Representative of the President of Ukraine in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine

H.E. Mr. Christian Wenaweser

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Permanent Representative of Liechtenstein

H.E. Mr. Alexander Marschik

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Permanent Mission of Austria
President of the Economic and Social Council

H.E. Mr. Rodrigo A. Carazo

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Permanent Mission of Costa Rica

H.E. Mr. Ivan Šimonović

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Permanent Mission of Croatia

H.E. Mr. Martin Bille Hermann

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Permanent Mission of Denmark

H.E. Mr. Olof Skoog

Head of the European Union Delegation to the United Nations
Permanent Mission of the European Union

H.E.Mr. Harold Adlai Agyeman

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Permanent Mission of Ghana

H.E. Mr. Cho Tae-yul

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Permanent Mission of the Republic of Korea

H.E. Mr. Olivier Maes

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Permanent Mission of Luxembourg

H.E. Ms. Pascale Christine Baeriswyl

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Permanent Mission of Switzerland

H.E. Mr. Sergiy Kyslytsya

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Permanent Mission of Ukraine

Mr. Adama Dieng

UN Secretariat and Agencies
UN Expert on Human Rights in the Sudan; Former Under Secretary-General and Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide

Chair

Ms. Minou Tavárez Mirabal

Dominican Republic

Ms. Tavárez was Vice-chancellor of the Dominican Republic for the period 1996-2000. Subsequently, she served as a Member of the National Congress from 2002-2016 and served as Chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Chamber of Deputies. She was Vice-President of the Confederation of Parliamentarians of the Americas (COPA) and was elected to the Executive Committee of PGA during the organization's Annual Forum in January 2010.  In 2020, the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court ("the Assembly") elected Ms. Tavárez as Board Member of the Trust Fund for Victims at the ICC.

As a member of PGA, she was elected President of the International Council in 2013. In 2011, she published the book "El Camino que Traigo Conmigo" (The Road I Bring with Me) including her speeches and articles from her experience as a politician and activist.

Ambassador Martin Sajdik

Austria

Ambassador Martin Sajdik was appointed Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office to the Trilateral Contact Group on the implementation of the peace plan in the East of Ukraine in January 2017. He was previously appointed as Special Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office in Ukraine and Serbia's OSCE Chairperson-in-Office. Prior to this, Sajdik served as the Permanent Representative of Austria to the United Nations, the People’s Republic of China, Mongolia and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. From 2003 until 2007, Ambassador Sajdik was Director- General for Economic Affairs and European Integration within the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Between postings at the Austrian Embassy in Moscow (1980-1985 and 1989-1991) and with the Executive Secretariat of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in Vienna (1986-1987), he held executive positions at a major Austrian construction company and an Austrian Bank in Moscow. Earlier in his career, he served at the Permanent Representation of Austria to the United Nations Office at Geneva. For his vital work promoting democracy, justice, and human rights, he was awarded the 2015 PGA Defender of Democracy Award.

Judge Song Sang-Hyun

Republic of Korea

Judge Song is President of UNICEF/Korea, former President and Judge of the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (2003-2015) and Professor emeritus and former Dean of Seoul National University Law School (1972-2007). He studied law in Korea, the United States, France, the United Kingdom and Germany and taught as a visiting professor at several law schools worldwide, notably at Melbourne Law School, New York University Law School and Harvard Law School.

Mr. Coşkun Çörüz

The Netherlands

Mr. Çörüz was a member of the House of Representatives of The Netherlands from 2001-2012. He previously worked as Coordinator of the Department of Education, Legal Affairs and Information in the Amsterdam Center for Foreigners and served as a Member of the City Council of Haarlem. In 2007, together with fellow-member, Mirjam Sterk, he started an initiative on foster care ("Family over home"). He currently serves as a Member of the Committee on Equal Treatment and as the Director of the Center for International Child Abduction.

Hon. Dr. Bernadette Lahai

Sierra Leone

Hon. Dr. Bernadette Lahai holds Ph. D in Agricultural Extension and Rural Development. She also has fifteen years of experience as a Member of Parliament in Sierra Leone and nine years as a Member of the Pan-African Parliament (PAP). She held the positions of Minority Leader of the People’s Party in Sierra Leone and the PAP’s Vice- President, respectively. Dr. Lahai is a founding member and former chair of the PGA National Group in the Sierra Leone Parliament and was elected to the PGA’s Executive Committee.

Ambassador Stephen J. Rapp

United States

Stephen J. Rapp is a Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Prevention of Genocide. He also serves as Chair of the Commission for International Justice & Accountability (CIJA). From 2009 to 2015, he was Ambassador-at-Large heading the Office of Global Criminal Justice in the US State Department. Rapp was the Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone from 2007 to 2009 where he led the prosecution of former Liberian President Charles Taylor.

From 2001 to 2007, he served as Senior Trial Attorney and Chief of Prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where he headed the trial team that achieved the first convictions in history of leaders of the media representatives for the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide. Before becoming an international prosecutor, he was the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Iowa from 1993 to 2001.

Victor (Ito) Bisonó

Dominican Republic

Victor (Ito) Bisonó was a Representative in the Chamber of Deputies of the Dominican Republic from 2002-2020. He served as Second Vice President of the Dominican-Haitian Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Bisono was a long standing PGA member and Chaired PGA's International Council until 2020 when he was appointed Minister of Industry, Commerce and MYPIMES (MICM) in the Cabinet of President Luis Abinader.